The Stage, Once More
“How far can you take it off?”
What in the world was that supposed to mean?
Rembrary stared at Jong-woo in open horror. But Jong-woo, who ought to have been offering guidance, was once again on the phone with somebody.
“Mr. Woo Yeon-woo. Did you not hear my question?”
Song Dae-baek asked again, flat and dry as ever.
Rembrary's mind spun like a well-oiled wheel. A photograph was akin to a painting. Which meant a photographer was akin to a painter. And by the same logic, being a photographer's model was essentially the same as being an artist's model. Which meant that this man was, at this very moment—
“You are asking me to pose nude?!”
The instant Rembrary burst out, Jong-woo dropped his phone, and a woman carrying a box of cables stumbled as her foot caught on the cords.
Song Dae-baek pulled his eyes away from the strange machine and stared at Rembrary with a blank expression. And then, for the first time, he threw his head back and roared with laughter.
“What on earth are you imagining?”
While Rembrary stood there dumbfounded, Song Dae-baek lowered the machine all the way down and scratched awkwardly around his eyebrow.
“Shirtless, swimwear, underwear, semi-nude. Something along those lines. I asked how far you could go because I need you to draw the line—otherwise I can't experiment with anything within it.”
Jong-woo, finally catching up to the situation, shouted on Rembrary's behalf, “Swimwear! Swimwear is fine!”
Song Dae-baek glanced briefly at Jong-woo, then turned back to Rembrary.
“That right?”
Rembrary, in too sour a mood to answer, said nothing.
“I'll take that as a yes,” Song Dae-baek concluded, deciding for himself. He pressed his eye back to the machine and began hammering the button. A rapid pop pop sounded in succession as the lights flickered.
The glare made Rembrary screw up his face, and Song Dae-baek—unlike before—sharply barked, “Don't close your eyes. Open them!”
“It is blinding. I cannot see what is before me.”
Song Dae-baek sighed, pulled his eye from the machine, and said, “I'll count—one, two, three. Keep your eyes shut on one and two, then open them on three. Got it?”
When Rembrary nodded, Song Dae-baek raised the machine to his eye again and called out.
“One, two—three!”
“···”
How many times did that repeat?
Eventually Song Dae-baek pulled away from the machine, glanced sideways at the small TV-like device standing beside him, and clicked his tongue.
“Wh-what? What is it? Is something wrong?”
Unable to bear watching, Jong-woo approached Song Dae-baek and asked.
Rembrary, still rubbing at eyes full of shimmering afterimages, listened in on their conversation.
“He keeps wincing and the poses are all stiff. I thought it'd turn out pretty bad—”
“And...?”
“It looks great. Strangely enough.”
“R-really? Haha! Our Yeon-woo photographs really well, doesn't he?”
“I don't know how to describe it. The atmosphere is unique. Like a priest or something.”
Rembrary lowered his hands and marveled at Song Dae-baek. He had never seen the man's photographs, so he couldn't say whether he had talent for it or not.
But his ability to pierce straight to the essence of things seemed beyond doubt.
Jong-woo, absolutely delighted, praised Yeon-woo to the point of embarrassment, while Song Dae-baek let it wash past him with one ear and gave his next instructions.
“We'll shoot the real thing now. Hye-won, leave that and come over here to help Mr. Woo Yeon-woo!”
“Yes, sir!”
“Heavy eye makeup. Suit for the outfit, no tie—and, ah, do the buttons all the way up. Tight enough that it looks a little suffocating.”
After changing and getting his makeup done, Rembrary looked in the mirror and let out a sharp gasp.
“What do you think? Super cool, right?”
The woman who'd done his makeup asked with pride, but to Rembrary's eyes it didn't look cool so much as it looked like a black-maned beast had settled around his eyes.
“I look like a tiger.”
“You love it!”
“That is not the point. Does this not look somewhat fearsome?”
“Bold makeup photographs better.”
“Bold in what way?”
Her explanations were hard to follow, but there was no time to press further—Song Dae-baek was shouting at him to hurry over. The woman gave a little yelp and shoved Rembrary along, and he found himself once more standing before that same white makeshift wall from earlier.
Astonishingly, there was now a coffin of some sort placed in front of the white wall, apparently brought in while he was changing and getting his makeup done.
As Rembrary stared at it, wondering why on earth there was a coffin, Song Dae-baek gave his instruction.
“Want to lie down in the coffin?”
By the time the shoot—conducted entirely in this fashion—was over, Rembrary was utterly exhausted in spirit.
It wasn't physical fatigue. It was that every single one of Song Dae-baek's demands had been grotesque. Lying in a coffin was one thing, fine, a concept—but why did he have to strike poses inside it?
Oblivious to his suffering, Jong-woo kept snickering at nothing, grinning from ear to ear.
Song Dae-baek seemed to be in equally high spirits.
Once Rembrary had changed back into his own clothes, he could see the two of them laughing together over the little TV.
And when Rembrary drew close, Song Dae-baek paid him this compliment:
“You struggle with the lighting, but you've got no fear of the camera itself. That's genuinely important—you got lucky. Plenty of people squander perfect conditions because of camera fright.”
“What, pray tell, is a camera?”
“Haha, good one.”
“?”
“Oh, and if you want to make the holy image commercially viable, you'd be better off building some muscle.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Mr. Woo Yeon-woo, your whole vibe is sacred, right? So as the twist, make the body sexy.”
“···I am not entirely certain I follow...?”
Song Dae-baek said it with perfect composure, tapping his own lips.
“If Mr. Yeon-woo were better with his words, sticking with the pure holy image like now would be fine. But I watched your interview—you talked pretty arrogantly, no?”
Jong-woo nodded along.
“What I mean is, after that kind of interview and that kind of mess, showing up now playing the sweet innocent boy would just come off fake and laughable. So go the other way entirely—like, an angel-faced devil. That sort of thing.”
“···”
As Rembrary stood gaping blankly, Song Dae-baek furrowed his brow.
“Too complicated? You know—gap appeal. Ascetic face, decadent body. That whole, uh, fallen-priest thing.”
“Calling me fallen is a bit much. I am, after all, still in active service.”
“That's exactly why you should do it.”
Rembrary, a sitting High Priest being asked to become a fallen priest, scratched his cheek awkwardly.
Even in his original world, there had been people with strange fantasies like that. Handsome and beautiful priests had always attracted an unusual number of devoted followers.
So he roughly understood what the man meant—but no one had ever demanded such a thing of a High Priest.
Which was precisely why being advised to cultivate a "fallen priest" image to his face was so deeply disorienting.
“I need the photos fast too, so I'm pulling an all-nighter on the edits. Should take two or three days, so check back then.”
The photos, promised in two days, still hadn't arrived by Friday.
But Rembrary had no time to sit around waiting for them.
No sooner had he returned from the shoot than he was back to practicing dance and vocals.
On Thursday, the dance teacher gave up on trying to soften Rembrary's movements and drilled him instead on blocking and synchronized choreography.
“Small mercies. Since everyone's dancing together, it feels less like I can't dance and more like I'm just getting lost among the members.”
Watching Rembrary dart back and forth among the members, the dance teacher was so moved he actually praised him.
Rembrary's skill was such that no one could honestly call it good dancing, so by the teacher's standards this was remarkably generous praise.
In any case, thanks to his heroic efforts, Rembrary improved to the point where he could at least disappear convincingly into the pack.
The vocal trainer, on the other hand, sniffled every time he heard Rembrary sing.
“It reminds me of my youth.”
“Ah. You were introduced to drink early in life, were you?”
“What?”
“The song. Is it not the lament of a man drunk on soju, pining after an unrequited love?”
“No, it's not the lyrics—it's just that your voice gives off that feeling.”
“Does it, now.”
“Jong-woo, you should give Yeon-woo a ballad or two down the line.”
The vocal trainer had long since stopped training Rembrary and settled into simply appreciating the performances.
And then, at last, the day of the Sing Sing Sing Sing stage arrived.
Jong-woo showed up at the dorm in the wee hours of the morning, woke the members, rushed them through washing up, refused them breakfast entirely, and herded them off to the salon.
It was a different building from the one Rembrary had first visited the previous week.
Unsurprisingly, everyone inside was a stranger too, and when the members arrived they shuffled over with weary faces and led each of them off to a different station.
After getting groomed there, they were back in the car, headed for yet another building different from last week's.
Jungseo, the leader, walked beside Rembrary and explained why the buildings kept changing.
“The music show we did last Friday and the one we're doing today are on different broadcasting companies.”
“I see.”
“There are several broadcasting companies. Do you know what a broadcasting company is?”
“I did look into it.”
“Right. Well, today's music show and the last one are the same kind of show—same timeslot, even—so the two companies absolutely despise each other.”
Different companies, but the work was much the same.
They filed into another waiting room, and while they sat there, stylists came in to help them change.
“Whoa, Yeon-woo, slicked-back hair suits you SO well!”
“Clearing that fringe away makes a huge difference!”
If anything had changed, it was that the stylists were a little kinder than before.
He wondered why, but the pitying glances they occasionally stole at him told the story—they must have heard about the memory loss.
“Don't be too nervous out there.”
Once dressed, they went out for rehearsal, and after rehearsal came Jong-woo's nagging. Then several more hours of waiting, and then one more time onto the stage.
The moment Rembrary stepped out, a strange feeling came over him.
He remembered last week—being dragged onto the stage with no idea what was happening—and now felt exactly as he had then. And yet it also felt like a year had passed since an event that had been barely a week ago.
Is there truly a way back?
As that bleak thought circled, the music began to flow—music now so familiar it haunted his dreams.
Unlike the last time, when he'd simply stood rooted in place, Rembrary executed the moves properly.
And, just as he had practiced endlessly, he began to dance the wooden-puppet choreography.
The entire ride back to the agency, not a single member opened their mouth.
This was their first stage since the incident. Nobody knew how it would be received, and the suspense had them all wound tight.
Jong-woo was busy monitoring reactions, a phone in one hand and a tablet in the other, but the members couldn't even bring themselves to look at their own phones—they just fidgeted uselessly with their hands.
When they pulled up in front of the agency and saw CEO Im standing there with a handful of staff, their anxiety only deepened.
But the moment the doors opened and they stepped out of the van—
What greeted them was CEO Im's triumphant whoop and the applause of the staff.